


Holding My Last Breath

by PanBoleyn



Series: Between the Sand and Stone [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Limbo, Loss of Identity, Marqueliot Niffins of Timeline 31, Other characters only mentioned, Quentin is the ambient magic version of a Star Wars Force ghost, Suicidal Thoughts, Timeline Shenanigans, Working Toward A Fix-It, ghost character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: After the doorway, Quentin falls, and keeps falling - until he learns to run again, and the running may save him even now.Or, the story of the Q in the mirror fromIf I Could Fall Into the Sky.
Series: Between the Sand and Stone [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623388
Comments: 12
Kudos: 91





	Holding My Last Breath

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Timeline 40b! Unfortunately, it will take more work to make this reality happier.
> 
> So, as this is canon up through 4.13 and containing some elements from 5.01-5.03 (gleaned from online info bc I did not watch), the obvious warnings apply for suicide and suicidal thoughts. Quentin also spends a section of this fic having lost his sense of self, if that's a trigger for anyone. As ever, if I missed any warnings, please let me know so I can edit!
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii for reading my draft and to my enablers in general!

Quentin hugs Penny and then steps back, taking a deep breath. Briefly, it occurs to him that it’s odd - he has no heartbeat, he’s a ghost, and presumably he’s not breathing at all, but he still feels like he is. Still feels the need to ground himself with a deep breath like he’s still alive. 

Weird. 

He walks toward the doorway without hesitation. _ “All that stuff that we think protects us or motivates us or scares us up there, here it just all falls away. You're finally just you. You'll see.” _ He’ll finally get to be at peace, and the people he loves are better off for what he did. Penny didn’t say it outright, but it’s clear - Quentin did more with his death than he ever could with his life, and his friends will be better off without him. 

He doesn’t think of the horror on Alice’s face, the last thing he saw, doesn’t think that he made promises to her and then died only feet away from her, doesn’t think how cruel that was. He doesn’t think of Eliot at the bonfire, long fingers wrapped around a peach, a look on his face like he’s drowning in grief. Doesn’t think that all he really wanted when he saw Eliot was to go to him and never let go. He doesn’t think of Julia’s tears or Margo’s shell-shock. 

(He does think of these things. But he tells himself he doesn’t, because he can’t go back, he’s dead and they’ll be better off without him even if they’re sad right now, he has to move on and he can’t bear to think about it.)

Except that he stops, a step away from the door. Turning back, he says, “You never asked for my secrets. Your, your thing is Secrets Taken To The Grave, but you didn’t actually ask for any.” 

“You told me about your suicide attempts.” 

Quentin shakes his head. “I don’t talk about those, like, all the time, but they weren’t secrets. Why haven’t you asked for any of my actual secrets, Penny?” 

“Look, Quentin, this isn’t your problem anymore. You’ve got your MetroCard, our friends will be fine, you can go. Rest in peace. I promise, you’re fine.”

“I don’t think you’re lying, I just think you’re acting weird.” 

And that’s the worst part, really. Quentin believes Penny. He believes that he can really just step through that doorway and find peace, he believes that he did the best thing because it was the only thing. His friends will be better off without him - they never would have been the Beast’s targets to begin with if not for him, he remembers telling the Monster how he’d broken things with Alice, he’d broken magic, it had all been true. The Monster had been there, wearing Eliot’s body, because of him. 

They are better off without him. Quentin believes this. He’s always known it, hasn’t he? Just like he knows, deep down, that he did stop running. That he could have made it. Maybe he didn’t consciously decide to kill himself, but he didn’t try to save himself either. It’s a more passive sort of suicide, but it’s really no different. Not that it matters, because as long as everyone else is all right what happens to him doesn’t matter, but still.

He knows he killed himself and that he should be glad to just move on, to rest in peace. He is so fucking tired, and death is probably the only way he would ever get to stop. But he also knows that something is wrong here, something doesn’t make sense when Penny is smiling like a Stepford wife and he didn’t really take any of Quentin’s secrets.

Something flickers in Penny’s eyes and he strides forward, taking Quentin by the shoulders and turning him back around to face the doorway. “Look, Q,” he says low in Quentin’s ear, and he sounds like himself again even though he had rarely if ever used Quentin’s nickname before. “You killed gods, you do  _ not  _ want to wait for them to realize you’re down here. You go through now, it’s the only shot you have, all right?” 

“Only shot for what?” 

“Just hang in there, someone will be able to help. That’s all I know, Coldwater. Good luck.” 

And he shoves Quentin through the doorway.

<><><>

  
  


At first, there’s nothing but quiet. It’s like floating in a warm pool, ears covered so that the whole world is silent. After all that Quentin’s been through in the last months of his life, his exhausted spirit welcomes the peace of it. No more pain, no more stress, no more fear. Just the warm, quiet dark. And if it’s not the actively happy afterlife he’d hoped for, well… 

It could also be a lot worse. 

_ Just hang in there. Someone will be able to help. That’s all I know, Coldwater. Good luck.  _

Hang in, hang on… but to what? For what? He’s dead, he’s beyond help, isn’t he? What luck is left to him?

_ Fifty years. Who gets proof of concept like that? Peaches and plums, motherfucker, I’m alive in here. _

He’s never going to know what that means. Why, of all the things Eliot could have said, he’d chosen that. 

_ I know that we are best when we are a team.  _

If he’d lived, Alice would probably have kicked his ass and he’d have deserved it, for more reasons than she knows. 

_ What did I do?  _

God, he’d asked Penny that and he’d meant his death, but he could have meant so many other things, and maybe it’s better that he’s dead because now they’ll miss him - they can walk away from that bonfire and that song and carry on with their lives, loving his memory and he won’t be there to be an actual messy human who could ruin that.

Who  _ will  _ ruin that, because he breaks things. Broke things. He doesn’t do anything anymore because he doesn’t exist anymore. The point is that if he did, he would ruin things. Because even his magic - 

Even repair, in the end, had been meant for breaking. Breaking the bad guy, but only by breaking himself too. Still, everyone else lived. The people he loves lived, and they’ll be all right. He did the right thing for them, and what is his life against theirs anyway? 

He used to want an ending like that, didn’t he? Well, he got it, and if this isn’t the happy afterlife he’d hoped for, at least it’s quiet. At least nothing hurts anymore. It’s such a relief, a velvet darkness that he can sink into, like a sleep deeper than any he’s ever known. Isn’t that how plenty of people talk about death anyway? Really, if that’s all it is, it isn’t so bad.

If eternal rest is really just that - rest - it’s not such a bad thing. And so Quentin relaxes, though he doesn’t know how he does that when he has no muscles to loosen, no breath or heartbeat to slow. He relaxes, and lets the darkness embrace him. It’s not the hugs he’s been craving, but he has no body to hug anymore, so he lets himself have this. Lets himself stop questioning it because what good are questions anyway.

_ Just hang in there. Someone will be able to help.  _

Does he need help? Why? Hasn’t he always been here?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin loses himself, for a while. 

First, he loses himself in the dark, and then the dark takes everything that he is. He forgets that there is life, that people exist, that there ever was or will be or can be anything but formless silent nothing, endless blackness. Except that he doesn’t actually know  _ black  _ any more than he knows any other color.

When the concept of it returns to him, it comes in pastel shades, in the shape of tiles. Blue and green and yellow, pink eventually reminds him of red as well. Purple and orange and how colors have many shades, the green leaves of the trees in summer, the red/orange/yellow in fall. 

The copper of wedding rings. The pink-red-yellow of peaches and the rich purple of plums. 

Julia’s hair and eyes, warm shades of brown. The light on Alice’s blonde hair, her eyes human-blue and Niffin-flame-blue. 

Eliot’s eyes, brown and green and amber-gold, silver rings, brown-black curls. 

His memories come back in colors, and then he remembers what a hug feels like, a clasped hand, a kiss. More than kisses, but here in this nothingness sex isn’t - 

He would rather have the hugs, the kisses. He would rather have someone hold him than fuck him, when all he actually has is a dark void like the blackest water. 

He remembers other things too, how red is also the red of blood - red against green, Eliot’s blood on the grass after Margo swung her axe, he remembers blue eyes and brown eyes and gold-hazel eyes without the people behind them that he loved. He remembers a silver crown he barely wore turning black in a fire, a heavy dark-stoned crown he held in his hands on a cliff by the sea. 

He remembers a grey world where his own magic burned him to nothing and how it hurt, how Alice had looked horrified and even 23 had been shocked. Remembers a bonfire in the dark, and all the pain he left behind. 

It was better. They’re alive. That’s worth his death, isn’t it? But he misses them, he wants to go home, all he ever wanted that day was to go home, it’s too late but he wants it more than ever.  _ He wants to go home. _

What color were the sparks that killed him? 

Gold. And when he remembers that, Quentin’s entire world turns to gold flame.

<><><>

  
  


It takes Quentin longer to figure out what’s happened than it would have if he’d never lost himself. Memory returns slowly in the gold, and real things, real people return long before the memory of fictional stories enjoyed. In fact, Quentin’s not sure TV shows and movies and books would have come back at all except that thinking about his friends hurts too much, so he tries to think of other things. 

Fillory comes back first, because he’s  _ himself  _ again, more or less. Star Wars takes longer than Star Trek, but both the best and worst thing about being whatever kind of ghost he is happens to be that he can remember everything now. Eidetic spirit memory, apparently, which sucks when you’re trying not to think about how much you miss the people you love, but is fairly useful when your entire world is made up of golden light and you get bored. Because you can basically replay anything you’ve ever watched or read in your entire life and that hurts a lot less than replaying  _ memories. _

Again, he has to figure that if this is the best afterlife he can hope for, it could have been significantly worse. Although given how he went from the black void to here, he has a feeling he’s in some kind of fucking weird transition. But he has no way of finding out what he’s transitioning to or why, so for now all he can do is hang in there. 

_ Just hang in there. Someone will be able to help. _

Great advice, Penny, but a little hint about what said help is going to be for might have been nice. 

Quentin’s mentally replaying the end of  _ Return of the Jedi _ when it occurs to him. The gold fire is, is magic. He’s a ghost stuck in the magic like it’s the fucking Force and he’s Alec Guinness. 

This always seemed significantly cooler on-screen or in one of the books he owns… used to own, which is what convinces him that he’s probably onto something, because it really is on brand that the real version sucks so much more than fiction leads you to believe.

So if he’s right and he’s stuck in magic, is he a Niffin? He doesn’t feel like a Niffin, his experience of them besides his reading is Alice and her brother but he doesn’t think he’s inclined to torment people he used to care about or absorb all the knowledge of magic that he can. Although from what he’d read, he doesn’t think all Niffins go for the latter the same way Alice did, there’d been something in one of the books about fixations, but that they could vary. 

He’s not particularly fixated on anything. So he’s… what, a Niffin with his shade intact? Because he definitely still cares about everyone, that is the absolute worst part of remembering that he’s a person… or... well, a consciousness that  _ used  _ to be a person. He’s not sure what if anything it means, and it’s more than a little unnerving. 

But Penny had said something about gods, what was it - oh, right, that Quentin did not want them to find him in the Underworld. Which implies that things could be a hell of a lot worse than they are right now. It also implies that maybe this isn’t supposed to happen, that maybe Penny really was rushing him in order to stash him away out of reach or something. 

Stash him away for how long, is the question, not that time means very much here.

Quentin drifts again, this time on swirls and waves of gold, and lets his mind wander because he really doesn’t have a choice, does he? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Ambient magic touches everything, doesn’t it? When Alice was a Niffin, she could see so much. She’d told Quentin that. Quentin doesn’t know what he is besides a ghost in the magic, not really - he thinks he’s made of magic like a Force ghost but there’s no way to prove it - but maybe he can do that too. 

_ Just hang in there. Someone will be able to help. _

But he can’t just wait forever, can he? Maybe he can break through somehow. Margo can see ghosts, and if 23 goes astral he can talk to ghosts, surely there’s a way to… There has to be something, doesn’t there? Penny wouldn’t have deliberately left him to this, would he? Quentin was never a saint and never thought he was - 

_ You’re not as a good a person as I hoped you were but you’re better than you think you are. _

\- but surely he could have gotten something less… lonely than falling forever in shades of black and gold? Unless this is his hell, to be forever alone because he always managed to fuck up every relationship he’d ever had. 

_ You killed gods, you do  _ **_not_ ** _ want to wait for them to realize you’re down here. _

Maybe it would be worse than this, maybe he really is stranded forever but Penny only did it because it would be a kindness by comparison. Julia said once that when she briefly revived Marina, she was terrified, traumatized, so there must be a hell somewhere, it isn’t all grey corridors or bowling alleys or shade orphanages. Somewhere there must be the fiery pits or the mythological tortures of Tartarus. 

But he wants to go  _ home _ . He wouldn’t even need to be part of things. He just wants to  _ see _ . Just wants to  _ know _ . Penny promised they’d all be all right, but he also said someone would help Quentin and that doesn’t seem to be true so how does Quentin know any of it is true? But if it isn’t, if everything is terrible and ruined again and all he can do is watch, how can he bear that?

How can he bear the empty golden flame, how can he bear the not knowing? 

What if he tries to push through? Can he do that? If he focuses on something, or maybe someone… Of course, he thinks of Eliot. He tries to will himself to where Eliot is, to see him -

_ Eliot and Margo leaning against a tree in Fillory, Margo in a hot pink coat and Eliot in a black suit, Margo says something Quentin can’t hear but Eliot isn’t happy, not with a dirty look like that -  _

And he thinks of Julia because if anyone else should be easy to reach -

_ Julia and Alice, sitting in a room full of windows, Julia composed and Alice half a mess, Julia handing Alice… Quentin’s old Fillory book, his first copy? - _

Something pulls at him - 

_ And it’s Alice again, in a dark room with a clay form on a table and something **tears** at him - _

Back in the gold again for a moment but then -

_ Eliot and Alice on the floor of a hotel room, and the little bottle gleaming gold on the floor tries to pull at him, it's the piece Alice took from him and Quentin tries to call out to them but he has no voice, but the bottle heats up, he can feel - _

The image disappears in a wave of blue fire and Quentin is back in the gold, three blue flames swirling around his nonexistent body. Except… he has an outline, shaped in golden fire slightly darker than the rest of it. And the blue flames do too - familiar outlines. 

One of them identical to his own. 

“Q, it’s you!” That’s - it’s Margo, with a crackle in her voice like lightning, and a cadence Quentin knows even if the blue flames didn’t give it away. Niffins, a Niffin Margo and himself and -

The third outline is Eliot. 

“It’s not me,” says the Niffin him. “Look at him, little lost puppy, I’m not like that…” 

“Oh, but he’s got potential,” says Niffin Eliot, spinning around Quentin and Quentin feels dizzy even though he shouldn’t because he has no body. “Bambi, Q, he’s  _ different _ . I like him.” 

“What, am I not interesting enough anymore?” Quentin’s Niffin counterpart grumbles, but he spins around Quentin too, his head-outline tilted quizzically. “Oh… but you’re right, El, damn you that’s not fair.” 

“Can you help me?” Quentin finds, suddenly, that he has a voice too, he has an outline self and he has a voice that crackles like a campfire (a bonfire). “You’re Niffins, you can manifest, can you help me get out of here?” It’s a terrible, terrible idea to ask Niffins for help but there isn’t anyone else, is there? He couldn’t hold any of the images of his friends long enough to even try to get their attention, so what choice does he have?

“Oh, honey. Why would we do that?” Niffin Margo asks, a tail of flame trailing down what would be his cheek like a tease. 

“It’s a challenge?” Quentin suggests, thinking how Niffin Alice had been all for helping rob a bank because she was bored and it would be interesting. 

“Or we could just make you our toy,” Niffin Eliot suggests with a wild laugh, and he spins faster. All three of them - 

And Quentin, desperate, tries to will himself away again. 

“Hey, you don’t get to -” His counterpart sounds indignant, blue flame darkening to navy in his rage but too late as Quentin falls, falls, through grey flashing like light catching on mirrors. All he’s thinking is that he needs to get away before the Niffins claim him, there’s no direction, no drive to it. 

He falls from flashing grey to white like ice and he thinks for a moment he sees himself and Alice in a room at Brakebills South, sight like split-screen in South uniforms but also Alice in her black dress and himself in that blue coat and then it’s gone, the grey flashing back. He runs, he keeps running in this greyness, which is what he should have done in the first place. In another world of grey he should never have stopped. If he hadn’t stopped running then none of this would have happened, he would be -

_ Lying unconscious in a hospital bed with Julia, Alice, and Margo talking by the door, and his left leg is half gone -  _

_ Sitting in a green courtyard with Eliot, crutches at his side - _

_ Staring out at himself, naked from the waist up and braced on the crutches again, hair growing out shaggy and… red? _

That's when Quentin realizes this other him, this possible future that he suddenly knows happened somewhere, the other him is staring back at him. 

"Help!" he yells, not sure if he can be heard or understood, and he thinks he sees Eliot over other-him's shoulder but the grey flashes again and he's -

Falling, falling in a tunnel of golden flame, a streak of darker gold fire racing away from three blue blazes chasing him down.

There's a him in another world who saw him. There's… His Alice and Eliot have the piece of him Alice tore away (though he doesn't know why she did that). Surely he just has to keep away from the Niffins for a while? Surely someone will help him now?

_ Please have heard me, _ Quentin thinks,  _ someone please find me. _ And he keeps running, too late but at least now he knows better than to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn! (FYI, I am vocally anti-s5 on Twitter so if that bothers you, stick with Tumblr.)


End file.
